The Fiery Cross

by Diana Gabaldon

  from the house-a small toolshed outside the kitchen garden. The wantill shed light enough to see the brick ing moon was low in the sky, but s derwebs path through the garden; the espaliered fruit trees spread black as spi

  against the walls. Someone had been digging; I could smell the cold damp of luntarily at the hint of worms and recently turned earth, and shivered invO

  mold. Jamie felt it, and put a light hand on my back. "All right, Sassenach?" he whispered.

  ,yes.,, I gripped his free hand for reassurance. They would hardly be burying den; the digging must be for something prosaic, like an Betty in the kitchen gar early peas. The thought was comforting, though my onion bed or a trench for apprehensions.

  skin still felt cold and thin, prickling with composed, as though he was outwardly

  Jamie himself was far from easy) t he was both usual. He was no stranger to death, and had no great fear of it. Bu

  Catholic and Celt, with a strong conviction of another, unseen world that lay past the dissolution of the body. He believed implicitly in tannasgeacb-in spirits-and had no desire to meet one. Stil15 if I was determined, he would brave

  ed my hand hard, and didn't let go.

  the otherworld for my sake; he squeez e debatable I squeezed back, deeply gratefill for his presence. Beyond th

  host might feel about my proposed plan of action, I question of how Betty's 9

  f deliberate mutilation disturbed him deeply, however knew that the notion o onvinced that a soulless body was no much his own intelligence might be c

  more than clay.

  "To see men hacked to death on a battlefield is one thing," he'd said earlier ng with me. "That's war, and it's honorable, cruel as it in the evening, still argui UP a poor innocent like yon woman in may be. But to take a blade and carve h troubled thought. "Ye're sure cold blood. . . " He looked at me, eyes dark wit

  ye must do itIClaire?" ts of the bag I was assem,yes, I am," I had said, eyes fixed on the conten

  nt wadding, to soak up fluids, small jars for organ sambling. A large roll of li heavy-bladed ples, my largest bone saw ,a couple of scalpels, a Aicked pair of er-looking knife borrowed fTom the kitchen ... it was a sinist

  shears, a sha. m clanking , rp eventthe

  collection, to be sure. I wrapped the shears in a towel to pr

  against the other implements, and put them in the bag, carefully marshaling my words. 11 eyes to meet his. "There's something "Look, I said at last, raising my

  504 Diana Gabaldon

  wrong, I know it. And if Betty was killed, then surely we owe it to her to find that out. If you were murdered, wouldn't you want someone to do whatever they could to prove it? To--to avenge you?"

  He stood still for a long moment, eyes narrowed in thought as he

  - looked down at me. Then his face relaxed, and he nodded.

  "Aye, I would," he said quietly. He picked up the bone saw, and began wrapping it with cloth.

  He hadn't protested further. He hadn't asked me again whether I Was sure. He had merely said firmly that if I was going to do it, he was

  coming with me, and that was all about it.

  As for being sure, I wasn't. I did have an abiding feeling that something was very wrong about this death, but I was less confident in my sense of what it was, with the cold moon sinking through an empty sky and wind brushing my checks with the touch of icy fingers.

  not malice. I could be wrong; perBetty might have died only by accident,

  haps it was a simple hemorrhage of an esophageal ulcer, the bursting of an or some other physiological oddity. Unusual, but natuaneurysm in the throat,

  ral. Was I doing this, in fact, only to try to vindicate my faith in MY own powers of diagnosis?

  The wind belled my cloak and I pulled it tighter around me,

  stiffening my spin, one-handed, I couldn't have

  - No. It wasn't a natural death, I knew it.

  said bow I knew it, but fortunately Jamie hadn5t asked me that. .

  I had a brief flash of memory; Joe Abernathy, a jovial smile of challenge on his face, reaching into a cardboard box f

  ull of bones, saying,

  can you do it to a dead person, Lady Jane?" "I just want to see I could; I had. He had handed me a skull, and the memory of Geillis Duncan shuddered through me like liquid ice.

  "Ye needna do it, Claire." Jan-tie's hand tightened on mine.

  "I willita. think ye a coward." His voice was soft and serious, barely audible above the wind.

  "I would," I said, and felt him nod. That was the matter settled, then; he let go of my hand and went ahead of me, to open the gate.

  -adapted eyes caught the clean sharp line of his proHe paused, and my dark

  file as he turned his head, listening, The dark-lantern he carried smelted hot and oily, and a faint gleam escaping from its pierced-work panel sprinkled the cloth of his cloak with tiny flecks of dim light.

  I glanced round myself, and looked back at the house. Late as it was, candles still burned in the back parlor, where the card games lingered on; I caught a faint murmur of voices as the wind changed, and a sudden laugh

  floors were mostly dark . The upper -save one window which I recognized as Jocasta's. "Your aunt's awake late," I whispered to Jamie. He turned and looked up at the house.

  "Nay, it's Duncan," he said sofily. "My aunt doesna need the light, after all. "Perhaps he's reading to her in bed," I suggested, trying to leaven the solemnity of our errand. A small derisive huff came f

  rom Jamie, but the oppressive atmosphere did lift just a bit. He unlatched the gate and pushed it open, showing a square of utter black beyond. I turned my back on the f

  riendly lights of the house and stepped through, feeling just a bit like Persephone entering the Underworld.

  The Fiery Cross 505

  Jamie swung the gate to, and handed me the lantern.

  are you doing " I whispered, hearing the rustle of his clothing. It was "What ?

  than a dark blur, but the so dark by the gate that I couldn't see him as more

  hat he was doing. faint sound that came next told me w

  "Pissing on the gateposts," he whispered back, stepping back and rustling further as he did up his breeks. "If we must, then we will, but I dinna want anything to be following us back to the house."

  I made my own .small huffing noise at that, but made no demur when he inthis ritual at the door to the shed. Imagination or not, sisted upon repeating

  the night seemed somehow inhabited, as though invisible things moved under the voice of the wind.

  through the darkness, murmuring

  . where the air was still, even though the it was almost a relief to go inside,

  scents of death mingled thickly with the dankness of rust, rotted straw, and mildewed wood. There was a faint rasp of metal as the dark-lantern's panel slid aft of light fell over the confines of the shed.

  back, and a dazzling sh

  They had laid the dead slave on a board across two trestles, already washed and properly laid out, wrapped in a rough muslin shroud. Beside her stood a small loaf of bread and a cup of brandy. A small posy of dried herbs, carefully twisted into a knot, lay on the shroud, just above the heart. Who had left those? I wondered. One of the other slavesl surely. Jamie crossed himself at the sight, . iv.

  and looked at me, almost accusingi,. ,ies ill tuck to touch grave goods."

  "I'm sure it's only ill luck to take them," I assured him, low-voiced, though I crossed myself before taking the objects and putting them on the ground in a corner of the shed. "I'll put them back when I've finished."

  "Mmphm. Wait just a moment, Sassenach. Dinna touch her yet."

  He dug in the recesses of his cloak, and emerged with a tiny bottle. He uncorked this, and putting his fingers to the opening, poured out a little liquid, which he flicked over the corpse, murmuring a quick Gaelic prayer that I recognized as an invocation to St. Michael to protect us from demons, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night.
Very useful.

  "Is that holy water?" I asked, incredulous.

  "Aye, of course. I got it from Father LeClerc." He made the sign of the Cross over the body, and laid his hand briefly on the draped curve of the head, before nodding reluctant approval for me to proceed.

  I extracted a scalpel from my bag and slit the stitching on the shroud carefully. I'd brought a stout needle and waxed thread , to sew up the body cavity; with luck, I could also repair the shroud sufficiently that no one would realize what I'd been doing.

  Her face was almost unrecognizable, round cheeks gone slack and sunken, and the soft bloom of her black skin faded to an ashy gray, the tips and cars a livid purple. That made it easier; it was clear that this was indeed only a shell, and not the woman I had seen before. That woman, if she was still in the vicinity, would have no objections, I thought.

  Jamie made the sign of the Cross -again and said something soft in Gaelic, then stood still, the lantern held high so that I could work by its light. The light threw his shadow on the wall of the shed, gigantic and eerie in the wavering flicker. I looked away from it, down to my work.

  506 Diana Gabaldon

  The most formal and sanitary of modern autopsies is simple butchery; this was no better-and worse only in the lack of fight, water, and specialized tools. "You needn't watch, Jamie," I said, standing back for a moment to wipe a

  wrist across my brow. Cold as it was in the shed, I was sweating from the heavy work of splitting the breastbone, and the air was thick with the ripe smells of an open body. "There's a nail on the wall; you could hang up the lantern, if you want to go out for a bit."

  "I'm all right, Sassenach. What is that?" He leaned forward, pointing carefully. The took of disquiet on his features had been replaced by one of interest. "The trachea and bronchi," I replied, tracing the graceful rings of cartilage,

  44

  and a bit of a lung. If you're all right, then can I have the light a little closer here, please?"

  Lacking spreaders, I couldn't wrench the rib cage far enough apart to expose the complete lung on either side, but thought I could see enough to eliminate some possibilities. The surfaces of both lungs were black and grainy; Betty was in her forties, and had lived all her lifetvith open wood fires.

  "Anything nasty that you breathe in and don't cough up again-tobacco smoke, soot, smog, what-have-you-gradually gets shoved out between the lung tissue and the pleura," I explained, liffing a bit of the thin, half-transparent pleural membrane with the tip of my scalpel. "But the body can't get rid of it altogether, so it just stays there. A child's lung would be a nice clean pink."

  "Do mine look like that?" Jamie stifled a small, reflexive cough. "And what is smog?"

  "The air in cities like Edinburgh, where you get smoke mixing with fog off the water." I spoke abstractedly, grunting slightly as I pulled the ribs back, A

  peering into the shadowed cavity. "Yours likely aren't so bad, since you've lived out of doors or in unheated places so much. Clean lungs are one compensation to living without fire."

  "That's good to know, if ye've got no choice about it," he said. "Given the choice, I expect most folk would rather be warm and cough."

  I didn't look up, but smiled, slicing through the upper lobe of the right lung.

  "They would, and they do." No indication of hemorrhage in either lung; no blood in the airway; no evidence of pulmonary embolism. No pooling of blood in the chest or abdominal cavity, either, though I was getting some seepage. Blood will clot soon after death, but then gradually refiquefies.

  "Hand me a bit more of the wadding, will you, please?" A little spotting of blood on the shroud likely wouldn't worry anyone, given the spectacular nature of Betty's dertise, but I didn't want enough to make anyone sufficiently suspicious to check inside.

  I leaned across to take the lint from his hand, inadvertently putting a hand on the corpse's side. The body emitted a low groan and Jamie leaped back with a startled exclamation, the light swinging wildly.

  I had jumped, myself, but quickly recovered.

  "It's all right," I said, though my heart was racing and the sweat on my face had gone suddenly cold. "It's only trapped gas. Dead bodies often make odd noises,"

  The Fiery Cross 507

  "Aye." Jamie swallowed and nodded steadying the lantern. "Aye, I've seen it often. Takes ye a bit by surprise, though, doesn't it?" He smiled at me, lopsided, though a pale sheen of sweat gleamed on his forehead.

  "It does that." It occurred to me that he had doubtless dealt with a good many dead bodies, all unembalmed, and was likely at least as familiar with the phenomena of death as I was. I set a cautious hand in the same place, but no further noises resulted, and I resumed my examination. modern form Another difference between this impromptu autopsy and the

  was the lack of gloves. MY hands were bloody to the wrist, and tile organs and iness; cold thogugha hitanwdas in membranes had a faint but unpleasant feel of slim unthe shed, the inexorable process of decomposition had started- 1

  der the heart and lifted it toward the light, checking for gross discolOrations Of the surface, or visible ruptures Of the great vessels -fter a minute. There was an "They move, too, now and then5" Jamie said, a ed

  odd tone to his voice, and I glanced up at him, surprised- His eyes were fix on Betty's face, but with a remote look that mad, it plain he was seeing something else.

  "Who moves?"

  "Corpses." He was right, though I thought he Gooseflesh rippled up my forearms.

  particular observation to himself for the moment.

  might have kept that sible, looking back at my work. "Common "yes," I said, as casually as Pos ust the movement of gases."

  postmortem phenomena. Usually j ne as casual as my own. "I saw a dead man sit up once," he said, his to

  "What, at a wake? He wasn't really dead?"

  "No, in a fire. And he was dead enough" atter-of-fact, but his face bore I glanced up sharply. His voice was flat and m seeing it again. an inward look of deep abstraction; whatever he'd seen, he- was

  g n the field. We "After Culloden, the English burned the Hihland dead o

  smelled the fires, but I didna see one, save when they took me out and put me in the wagon, to send me home." ayer of hay, nose pressed to a crack in the He had lain hidden under a I agon driver had taken a circuitous route off

  boards in order to breathe. The w ear the farmhouse, and at one the field, to avoid any questions from troops n

  point, had stopped for a moment to wait for a group of soldiers to move away. "There was a fresh pyre burning, perhaps ten yards away; they'd set it alight no more than a short time before for the clothes had only just begun to 1-111. 1

  or saw Graham Gillespie lyin' on the heap near me, and he was surely dead, f

  there was the mark of a pistol shot on his temple."

  The wagon had waited for what seemed a long time, though it was hard to had seen Gillestell, through the haze of pain and fever. But as he watched, he

  Pic suddenly sit up amid the flarnes5 and turn his head. my right mind, I "He was lookin' straight at me," he said. "Had I been in

  expect I would ha' let out a rare skelloch. As it was, it Only se .emed ... friendly of Graham." There was a hint of uneasy amusement in his voice. "I thought he was perhaps teltin' me it wasna so bad, being dead. That, or welcoming me to hell, maybe."

  508 Diana Gabaldo.

  "Postmortem contracture," I said, absorbed in the excavation of the diges"Fire makes the muscles contract, and the limbs often twist into tive system.

  very lifelike positions. Can you bring the light closer?"

  ree, and carefully slit the length f it, rning

  0 tu I had the esophagus pulled f

  back the flabby tissue. There was some irritation toward the lower end, and there was blood in it, but no sign of rupture or hemorrhage. I bent, squinting up into the pharyngeal cavity, but it was too dark to see much there. I was in no way equipped for detailed exploration, so instead returne
d my examinations to the other end, slipping a hand under the stomach and lifting it up.

  I felt a sharpening of the sense of wrongness that I had had through this whole affair. If there was something amiss, this was the most likely place to find evidence of it. Logic as well as sixth sense said as much.

  There was no food in the stomach; after such vomiting that was hardly surrising. When I cut through the heavy muscular wall, though, the sharp scent p

  of ipecac cut through the reek of the body.

  "What?" Jamie leaned forward at my exclamation, frowning at the body. "Ipecac. That quack dosed herAith ipecac-and recently! Can you smell it?" He grimaced with distaste, but took a cautious sniff, and nodded.

  "Would that not be a proper thing to do, when you've a person iNi' a curdled wame? Ye gave wee Beckie MacLeod ipecacuanha yourself, when she'd drunk your blue stuff."

  "True enough." Five-year-old Beckie had drunk half a bottle of the arsenic decoction I made to poison rats, attracted by the pale blue color, and evidently not at all put off by the taste. Well, the rats liked it, too. "But I did that right away. There's no point in giving it hours afterward, when the poison or irritant has already passed out of the stomach."

  Given Fentiman's state of medical knowledge, though, would he have known that? He might simply have administered ipecac again becauA he could think of nothing else to do. I frowned, turning back the heavy wall of the stomach. Yes, this was the source of the hemorrhage; the inner wall was raw-looking, dark red as ground meat. There was a small amount of liquid in the stomach; clear lymph that had begun to separate from the clotted blood left in the body. "So you're thinking that it was maybe the ipecac that killed her?"

  "I was ... but now I'm not so sure," I murmured, probing carefully. It had occurred to me that if Fentiman had given Betty a heavy dose of ipecac, the violent vomiting provoked by it might have caused an internal rupture and hemorrhage-but I wasn't finding any evidence of that. I used the scalpel to slit the stomach further open, pulling back the edges, and opening the duodenum.

  "Can you hand me one of the small empty jars? And the wash bottle, please?"

  Jamie hung the lantern on the nail and obligingly knelt to rummage through the bag, while I rummaged further through the stomach. There was some granular material forming a pate sludge in the furrows of the rugae. I scraped gingerly at it, finding that it came free easily, a thick, gritty paste between my fingertips. I wasn't surewhat it was, but a suspicion was growing unpleasantly in the back of my mind. I meant to flush the stomach, collect the residue, and take it back to the house, where I could examine it in a decent light, come morning. If it was what I thought-

  The Fiery Cross

  509

  Without warning, the door of the shed swung open. A whoosh of cold air n-,ade the fiame of the lantern burn suddenly high and bright-bright enough to show me Phillip Wylie's fare, pate and shocked in the frame of the doorway.

  He stared at me, his mouth hanging slightly open, then closed it and swallowed; I heard the sound of it clearly. His eyes traveled slowly over the scene, then returned to my face, wide pools of horror.

  I was shocked, too. My heart had leapt into my throat, and my hands had frozen, but my brain was racing.

  What would happen if he caused an outcry? It would be the most dreadful scandal, whether I was able to explain what I was doing, or not. If not-fear close to being burned for witchrippled over me in a chilly wave- I had come-

  craft once before; and that was One time too often.

  I felt a slight movement of the air near my feet, and realized that Jamie was crouched in the deep shadow below the table. The light of the lantern was bright, but limited; I stood in a pool of darkness that reached to my waist.

  'ed him, as a signal to Wylie hadn't seen him. I reached out a toe and nudg

  stay put. If to smile at Phillip Wylie, though my heart was stuck firmly in I forced myse

  my throat, and beating wildly. I swallowed hard and said the first thing that which happened to be "Good evening."